Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new.

I'm very comfortable in a room with thousands of people.

Something is profoundly wrong and we are desperate for justice, for restoration and for somebody somewhere to do something about this.

If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here." I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question.

Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how much this hurts." The cross is God's way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments. The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, "Me too.

You're here, you're breathing, you are the recipient of an extraordinary act of generosity called life.